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Saturday, 7 August 2010

Facebook and how it's changed the way we communicate

Gay, friend, talk, like and social networking. Like all words, these have evolved in meaning even to the point of absurdity where a word in no way resembles the original intended use. Gay used to mean happy go lucky person with a positive disposition, it now means homosexual. The evolution is not linear but affected by the currents of linguistic usage and historically relevant events. As a word , gay, has moved from a simple description of a person's mood and basic character to mean a specific sub set of people. Much of this happened over a long time and seemed to make some kind of sense. But, like, Social Networking and Friend, have evolved so quickly as to be parodies of themselves. Social Networking used to mean going to the Lions Club, becoming a Big Brother or joining the Chamber of Commerce, it then moved to mean using the computer to meet people of like mind to create a community that will support your musical, ethnic or cultural taste ( who, Trek, Star Wars) or to advance your business and recruit. Today social networking means a place to play games with other skill deprived persons who cannot sew, cook, whittle, fish, read, write, or play board games. Friend, as a word has lost it's meaning all together, like the the now nearly pointless like, it has been so watered down that if you have spoken to somebody once or briefly contacted them, they are your friends. Best friend or top ten friend then comes to mean somebody you like or communicate with more often. Now lets look at the communication involved. With 500,000,000 people on Facebook, communication means sending, virtual pets and chain letters to your mates.

When I first signed up to Facebook in 2006, it was a truly interesting place. I was able to speak and interact with people from my region and the tools were there to look for animators in Newcastle. Back then a group was a group of people who genuinely were sufficiently interested in a subject or cause to talk about it to other people. I could find lost friends and relatives, even the ones I wanted to keep a few miles clear of me on the best of days. Now I hear you saying that it's still there, and yes you're right, but most people on Facebook aren't there for that. The vast majority use Facebook to waste time, to play games to achieve landmarks in their sad lonely life, like level 100 in Ninja Wars. The art of communication has been reduced in some groups of people to a few shockingly shortened words used to express shock or joy or anger. Any visit to the X factor forum will let you know where the illiterate masses have landed. If that's English, I'm a space alien.

Some Facebook users claim it empowers young people and connects them to the day to day reality of politics and the rest of the world. For a few seconds maybe. The time it takes to LIKE a link and swear a bit about something. Signing a petition used to mean taking pen to paper and depositing the finished result with the appropriate authorities. Now it means clicking , LIKE on a cause PAGE. Will the government ever really know or care you did that? Will you ever break a sweat and join other real people in the street to show your numbers to those who are swayed by such public displays? The fact is that the vast majority of the Facebook generation will not vote, do not volunteer or go out of their way to be informed or talk to others about their causes. There is a reason why the extreme right in the West are advancing at such a pace. FB and other such sites provide a willing and uninformed mass of recruits who aren't bothered to check beyond the pretty picture or the single strongly stated phrase. Bored young people now find political activism through a few clicks that cost them little time and next to no real involvement. Regardless of political ideology, the average young activist on FB is a ghost that does not go to meetings, do door to door or join the movements they claim to support. Most discussion sections in groups or pages are pointless now as most topics started on FB groups seem to consist of one post followed by 20 identical such topics. It's as if no one actually reads anything others have bothered to post.

And on the subject of extremist movements like the BNP and the English Defense League. These groups have discovered just how easy it is to spread hate and ignorance to the easily impressionable people currently using FB. FB claims it's against stalking and hate speech, but does nothing to make it harder for fascist and far right groups to peddle their anti gay, anti immigrant, anti Muslim, anti not OUR COUNTRY diarrhea. Entire protests and racist attacks have taken place under the noses of FB bosses and the police have had to enlist online volunteers to root these anti social elements out. The same auto filters that seek to advertise at us do not monitor the groups and pages for racist content that would get you arrested if you were to say it on the radio or telly. I'm all for free speech , but what I have seen in statuses, groups and pages is so blatantly hate speech it causes immediate protest. Has this kept the users responsible for this from going away? Far from it. They seem to have discovered the FB weak point. Few efforts are made to stop them and when they are banned, they come back almost as quickly. These racists and radicals thrive on hacking and flooding other groups to the point of killing any real dialogue such at it is on FB. The fact that many of the younger shockingly ignorant, users are habitual offenders of such tactics leads me to wonder where the tolerant society we had worked so hard to build has gone to? As for the American based FB police, it takes them so long to get with it with other local customs , that groups such as "feed bacon to all Muslims HAHAHAHA" stay up far longer than they need to and the damage gets done. Far right groups have used FB repeatedly to start unsubstantiated rumours about the police, Muslim groups, and things frankly too preposterous to repeat here, leaving us rational people to fight a rearguard action against the morons and the people who buy into it. You would think that the trend tracker at FB would notice a spike in the number of groups claiming to know police will ban the English flag during the World Cup, being formed. Despite being patent nonsense, these groups were allowed to stay up and some even openly fomented violent action and provocation. Where the hell was FB?

On a less serious but equally annoying point, why would I want to know that 300,000 people on FB LIKE X factor, so maybe I should. Or the time every single one of 350 FRIENDs on a mates list was suggested at me? So what if he LIKEs Katie Price, it's enough I have to read what he wants to do to her with his "magic wand".... Oh he's also a massive Harry Potter nerd. FB has gone as far as suggesting I be FRIENDS with at least 3 of the 7 Mike Ashleys on FB. If you're not from the NE of England.... Mike Ashley is another name for useless oily twat, fat wanker, leech who is doing all he can to destroy our NUFC. And if I'm honest, how many things do I need to LIKE? Do I like sleeping? Do I like scratching my nose? I'm not making these up. You asked me once and I div'nt want to tell you again. That's another thing. To join a debate on something, I have to LIKE a topic before I can say owt about it. What if I hate racists? Must I LIKE "Hitler was a role model" to discuss it? It makes me truly uncomfortable. Give us back the JOIN button, it at least meant something.

As for friends, I used to have real friends, still do, some of them are on FB, some are on MSN ( though not nearly as many there used to be) some face to face. In every sense of the word, they are my friends. They do however break into distinct groups, political ones, football ones, business and entertainment ones and family. Some even straddle a number of these groups. I do however have a number of FRIENDS who are the casual-est of acquaintances that happen to support the same football team I do, some, in the belief that because I created a group they LIKE, I need to be FRIENDs with them. Now I don't mind some of my friends knowing my business, but do I need to have near complete strangers in Ohio or Pakistan knowing what I had for breakfast or when I'm going to watch Doctor Who? The question is simple, where is the line in the sand that says, I don't mind you , but you don't need to know my most intimate of details. Even among my own friends, I take care not to say certain things, lest it be taken as too much information. Yet every time I say ( write) anything in FB, even the person I barely know in Ohio or the Congo also knows this. On FB, you are my FRIEND or you're not. I cannot set my privacy filters past these basic settings. My FRIENDS are all on the same footing. That of course means we have to retreat behind private messages and e-mail. Which of course brings us back to the reason we're all on FB. Most of us migrated to join all our mates who abandoned MSN and E-mail in the first place. Formerly active and vibrant forums where we just talked ( talked, as in wrote in whole sentences to other people) have gone empty and only the biggest and strongest ones survive. .

This last week while I waited for my turn to use the single lappy, as the other was in the shop for an update, my wife spent several hours buying homes and renting them to virtual rock stars, she them spent 30 minutes accepting gifts, then about the same time sending gifts to people she never ever talks to. She was upset that I asked her to pry herself away from this incredibly important work to help me with the real world stuff. We "chatted" and discovered that from over 250 so called friends, she only wanted about 50. These other gaming friends, had on average between 200 and 400 friends on FB, all of which were addicted to games. They all did the same as my wife did but even more obsessively. Some, I kid you not, had not said anything to anybody in months. FB had become a time killing site at best and a gaming addiction at worst. FB makes no effort to discourage this addictive behavior as it makes money off Zynga and other partners. Millions of users are spending otherwise productive time, building civilizations and running fake restaurants in unrealistic conditions while their real lives go completely ignored. This week since extracting herself from the grip of FB games, my wife has started embroidery, got back to reading the three books she started last winter and is back at work on our principle project, in addition to pulling her weight in the house again. For the record, you can remove almost any button from your FB profile, but you can't get rid of the GAMES button.

In a separate but related item, the vast majority of the games on FB assume the only working societal model and linguistic structure we need, is the American model. Even weak attempts at breaking out of this still end up mired in American assumptions of what is normal, what we as users would want as items and what events we choose to honour. FB has a world wide following but persists in catering almost solely to it's American user base which is less and less. In Africa, Asia, in fact the entire emerging world ( in computer terms), users are being taught the internet through FB. The repercussions of culture and habits on these people are yet to be seen, but it can't be good. It's bad enough we have entire armies of young people saying things like "ur rite".

FB and social networking are now miles apart from where they started out. Today I cannot without expending money, find who I need for our business. I cannot limit my search area to Newcastle Upon Tyne, I cannot hope to market our opportunity to the right people through FB without spending money. Social Networking used to be easier and more efficiently done on FB, but now the business model in effect is that of a retailer of users to game creators. Virtual games with virtual accessories for real money. People with real causes and projects don't stand a chance.

I, unlike some of my mates new and old, still use any platform open to me, to talk to real people in real time. I have come to depend on FB for that link I need when Gally Base, E-mail or the phone won't do. I still read directly online all manner of newspapers and blogs, sometimes I catch up with them in FB, but I see that despite over 60% of eligible computer users in the UK being on FB, it's all they can do to muster the energy to comment on the Guardian or Telegraph. Thousands have joined the online Labour Party, but it's the same handful of voices you hear ( well read) on a regular basis. Most FB users today are not bothered enough to do more than LIKE something.

Last thing, I represent the gen X crowd, we are online, we are tech savvy and we are users, but to be honest, if you look at most aps, you see teenagers as young as 14 being touted as the only demographic worth running after, FB groups and polls that are far from scientific are held up as the definitive list of the all time greatest comedians and singers, nary a sight of the Beatles or the Ramones, James Corden gets the big numbers as most of us are never asked our opinion. It's as if we are invisible. To say FB is the true reliable face of modern society is insanity and yet we are doing it. FB invades our privacy, treats us like commodities for sale and seem happy to keep doing this for a long time to come. As long as FB is not about Social Networking and continues to be about games and gamers, those of us who have no choice but to stay through social pressure, will be subjected to an endless stream of service cuts and useless fixes that make navigating the site more and more difficult while a few million more get addicted to the games and forget what it is to truly communicate.

I'd love to migrate to something else where all my mates are, but sadly that option does not as yet exist. As and when it does come around, I will leave and take as many of my FRIENDS with me. Till then I have to use the wholly unreliable chat feature of FB, as my current crop of FRIENDS are too used to it to go back to the vastly superior MSN.